Selection and Comparative Advantage in Technology Adoption

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. An index to papers in the Economic Growth Center Discussion Paper Series is located at: http://www.econ.yale.edu/~egcenter/research.htm Terms of use: Documents in Selection and Comparative Advantage in Technology AdoptionTavneet Suri ABSTRACTThis paper examines a well known empirical puzzle in the literature on technology adoption: despite the potential of technologies to increase returns dramatically, a significant fraction of households do not use these technologies. I study the use of hybrid maize and fertilizer in Kenya, where there are persistent cross-sectional differences in aggregate adoption rates with a large fraction of households switching in and out of adoption. By allowing for selection of farmers into technology use via comparative advantage differences, I examine whether the yield returns to adopting hybrid maize vary across farmers. If so, high average returns can coexist with low returns for the marginal farmer. My findings indicate the existence of two interesting subgroups in the population. A small group of farmers has potentially high returns from adopting the technologies. Yet, they do not adopt. This lack of adoption appears to stem from supply and infrastructure constraints, such as the distance to fertilizer distributors. In addition, a larger group of farmers faces very low returns to adopting hybrid maize, but chooses to adopt. This latter group might benefit substantially from the development of newer hybrid strains to increase yields. On the whole, the stagnation in hybrid adoption does not appear to be due to constraints or irrationalities.

Climate variability, consumption risk and poverty in semi-arid Northern Ghana: Adaptation options for poor farm households

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New parsimonious simulation methods and tools to assess future food and environmental security of farm populations

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“…The population-based approach to agricultural systems modelling represents a fundamental departure from the conventional analysis that uses averaged or aggregated data in 'representative farm' models and agricultural market models. Besides representing the essential biophysical and economic heterogeneity of these systems, the population-based approach provides a new way to simulate economic, environmental and social impacts of changes in technology and in economic or environmental conditions, taking into account the self-selection behaviour emphasized in the econometric policy evaluation literature [10] and in recent contributions to the technology adoption literature [8,11]. In this article, we show how the population-based model can be linked to aggregate processes, for example, changes in market supply and demand conditions or environmental conditions for example, climate [12], and we show how the approach can be implemented with parsimonious empirical models following [7,8,13].…”

Value Chains and Technology Transfer to Agriculture in Developing and Emerging Economies

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